Blog date 32

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘Now is the hour…..

                          …….for me to say goodbye’

 

            Those were the opening words of a popular song of the wartime years when there were so many goodbyes, many of them for ever.   I am afraid, dear Blog readers, that time has come for what was my weekly blog.  Google informs me that I have been writing and publishing it for seven and a half years and that I have written and published 390 blogs in that time.   For the first three or four years I wrote an average of about 2,000 words per blog.  More recently I have reduced that to about 1,000.  I reckon that I averaged about 1,200 words a week for seven and a half years.  That’s 7.5 x 1,200 x 52.  No, I’m not going to work it out but it certainly comes to quite a lot of words.

            Also thanks to Google, I learn that my blog has a world-wide readership.  There are twice as many regular readers in the USA as there are in the UK.  I have regular readers in Germany, France and Russia, and occasional readers in virtually every European country and in such countries as China, India, Sri Lanka, and Japan.  Thank you all, dear readers, for your interest and encouragement.

            I used always to enjoy writing my blog and was proud of it. Lately though I feel that I have become stale and repetitive.  I find myself forgetting how to spell simple, straight-forward words.  I often have to refer to Google for facts that should be – and once were! – engraved in my memory.  It is, I think, just old age. Now that I am 94, it seems better to depart from the internet stage before I publish something that is obviously total rubbish.

            The causes that I have supported throughout those seven and a half years remain the same.  I can only hope that others will keep them alive.

Nuclear Disarmament

I believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Our own nuclear arms are concentrated in the Trident Submarine Fleet wrongly described as ‘our independent nuclear deterrent’.   It is anything but independent (can you imagine our government even threatening to use a nuclear weapon without the OK of the USA?).  It hasn’t deterred any one of the many acts of violence and aggression that have taken place since the end o0f World War II.  Did those nuclear submarines deter the Argentines from invading the Falklands?

It might persuade other governments relying on nuclear defence to refrain from using their weapons because of the certainty of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD!)  It would not deter the jihadists of the Islamic State from using such a weapon if they ever got hold of one. They are quite certain that they’ll be assured a ‘front seat’ in Heaven if they kill themselves while precipitating a satisfactory number of infidels and apostates (every-one who doesn’t share their noxious beliefs) to the ‘other place’!

 A country relying on a nuclear weapon ‘as a deterrent’ has a government as stupid and as irresponsible as a fifteen year old adolescent who carries a sheath-knife into the classroom with precisely the same motive!     

Working for World Peace

            I do not believe that the best way to secure world peace is to ring Russia around with members of Nato – inevitably seen by the Russians as a hostile alliance.  We complain of the ‘provocative action’ of the Russians in flying a couple of bombers round Britain keeping just outside British air space.  What are the Russians to think of NATO military manoeuvres in Poland, just beyond Russia’s frontiers?  We know the Russians have an enormous army and air-force.  They know that NATO has too!  For goodness sake, let’s stop trying to prove that ‘mine is bigger than yours!’   They’re both big enough to reduce our wonderful world to ruins if their top politicians are daft enough to let them. And I fear that some of them may be. For goodness sake let us talk peace and join together to think of how best to counter the acts of the jihadists – the real enemies of both Russia and ‘the West’.

Working for a more equal economy

            The top ‘at home’ priority of any responsible British government should be to narrow that yawning, and ever widening, gap between the incomes of the very poorest and very wealthiest of our citizens. Shamefully this gap actually widened during the decade of New Labour rule.  A way in which any government could narrow that gap would be the radical reform of the income tax system and making a reformed income tax the principal source of government revenue. Every adult, rich or poor, should be required to pay the same percentage of his or her gross income as their annual subscription for the very-considerable privilege of living and working in the UK.   Benefits to the very poorest of us would need to be raised to prevent this tax reducing anyone to homelessness or malnutrition.  I think that 20 percent of every adult’s gross income (before there’s a chance to salt it away overseas or in a charitable trust!) would probably be sufficient.  We would then all have an interest in Britain’s economic future and really would ‘all be in this together’

The European Union

Forty years ago I voted no to the European Common Market in that famous referendum. I had the rather romantic idea that we could seek closer economic and political union with the countries of the Commonwealth and what was left of the British Empire, to create a political and economic bloc capable of co-operating or competing with the USA and the  world’s emerging powers.

If I’m still around when we have the opportunity to vote either to stay in or depart from what is now the European Union, I shall vote to stay in, and I will hope that we achieve an even closer economic and political union with our European partners. I believe that the UK can make its voice heard and its opinions respected better as an active member of a federal Europe than as a non-voting protectorate of the USA.

We are part of Europe by geography, history and culture.  Nowadays it isn’t politically correct to say so but over the centuries the Christian faith has been the background in front of which the ancestors of all we Europeans have lived, worked and died.  As was repeated over and over again in the Scottish referendum campaign;  ‘We’re better together’!

I’d have a little more respect for Ukip if they really stood for an independent United Kingdom as they claim. They don’t. Their venom is reserved for our neighbours and friends in Europe.  You’d think that the EU was another hostile country determined to weaken and destroy the UK instead of a union of Nations in which we have exactly the same influence as anyone else. Remember the Ukip members of the European Parliament rising and turning their backs at the playing of the European Anthem.  I don’t believe that even the most fervent Republicans would be so ill-mannered as to turn their backs when others were standing and singing ‘God save the Queen’.

Ukippers seem to be quite happy with our membership of NATO (on which we Britons have never had the opportunity of expressing an opinion) and our one-sided ‘special relationship’ with the USA.    NATO and the ‘special relationship’ have cost us far more that the EU in both blood and money.  They involved us in two ‘colonial wars’, one illegal and the other unwinnable.  In every country where we have interfered the result has been disastrous. In Iraq Islamic State forces are slowly but surely taking over.  I’d be very surprised if there are not Iraqis today who look back on the rule of Saddam Hussein as a golden age! In Afghanistan the Taliban attacks ever more boldly, and the even-more-bloodthirsty jihadists of Islamic State have also put in an appearance.  Libya is now ungoverned and ungovernable – thanks to our helping in the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi!  Gaddafi’s rule was awful but the current anarchy (of which Islamic State is already taking advantage) is surely worse.

Climate Change

            I have left climate change till the last despite the fact that this is the threat that is capable of making the other causes that I have supported seem to be trivial irrelevances.  The reason it comes last is that effective countering of climate change demands the support and action of the government of every country in the world, and there are powerful forces trying to prevent this.

I took this photo of the Rhone Glacier on the pass between Italy and Switzerland in 1980.   I was told that last year 2014 there was no ice visible from that vantage point 

            
We don’t need a university degree to note that in recent years there have been more extreme weather conditions than even folk of my age can remember.  There have been extreme heat waves destroying rain-starved food crops.  There have been typhoons and hurricanes, devastating floods, prolonged droughts, occasional unseasonable spells of arctic weather. All of these have brought loss of life and destruction of property world-wide. The polar ice-caps are melting at an accelerating rate as are the mountain glaciers.

            The overwhelming conclusion of the world’s most eminent scientists has been that global warming is taking place and that this has caused those extreme weather conditions world-wide.  Furthermore, they are equally certain that most of that warming is due to human activity – to humankind’s relentless exploitation of the world’s natural resources, in particular to the profligate burning of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) for space and water heating in the home, in industry, for travel, and for any other activity needing an energy supply.  The remedy seems simple and straightforward enough; reduce and eventually eliminate the use of fossil fuels and replace them with sources of clean, renewable energy such as can be supplied by wind turbines, solar panels, the sea’s waves, the flow of the rivers, the ebb and flow of the tide. There may be others. The UK, with its enormous coastline, is well suited for the use of tidal energy.

            Voices demanding urgent international action to combat man-made climate change include virtually the whole of the scientific community and, surprisingly but very, very gratifyingly, the Pope.  The present Pope has won the admiration of many non-Roman Catholics  and will, I hope, have persuaded thousands over to the ‘Green cause’.  Lined against them are the many thousands of people who work in, or profit from, the fossil fuel industries.  These include some very wealthy and influential men.

            Our new government which once, just before an election, urged the electorate ‘if you want Green. Vote Blue’, seems to have joined the forces of Mammon.  They are abolishing grants toward the production of wind turbines, giving local councils the final word over whether they should permit wind turbines in their areas (of course there will always be lots of local Nimbys who will oppose them) and are encouraging fracking – exploiting yet another source of fossil fuel as well as despoiling our  countryside.  In an earlier blog I said that if either the Conservative or the Labour Party won the election outright the results wouldn’t be as good as supporters had hoped but, on the other hand, they wouldn’t be as bad as their opponents had feared, I was wrong.  On the climate change front at least, the Conservative government’s action is even worse than their opponents had feared. Shortly there’s to be an international conference on climate change  My guess is that there will be lots of good intentions expressed but precious little urgent action promised.

            Perhaps I’ll conclude with a couple of verses from a poem by Arthur Clough, a 19^th century poet.  It has cheered me on occasion:

Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars.

Perhaps by yonder smoke concealed

Your comrades chase e’en now the flyers

And, but for you, possess the field.

Although the tired waves, vainly breaking.

Seem here no painful inch to gain;

Far back, through creek and inlet making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And that, dear blog readers, is the end of my final blog.  I’m sorry I couldn’t contrive a happy ending – but it is, at least, a hopeful one.

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Week 29 2012

Tendring Topics.......on line

An Ageing Population!

          As a nonagenarian I have a direct interest in the government’s plans to meet the needs of an ageing population.  I don’t really feel that I have so far been a very great burden on the state or the local authority.  I have cavity wall infilling to my bungalow, double glazing, a solar panel to augment my gas hot water and central heating system and an electric mobility scooter to give me mobility, all at my own expense.  I did take advantage of a government grant to have my roof space properly insulated and Essex County Council Social Services have provided me with a handrail to help me make my way safely from my front door to my front garden path.

            My age and disabilities have obtained for me the lower rate of attendance allowance which helps with cleaning the bungalow, keeping the garden tidy and keeping my mobility scooter ‘on the road’.  And that is about it.  I am thankful that I have as yet needed neither domiciliary care nor residential care in a care home – and I very much hope that I never need either.

            That kind of care is expensive and the great debate among the politicians is how much they can expect old people to pay towards its cost.  Currently they have produced a plan for the future that could justifiably be called Much ado about Nothing, or at least about very little!  There must, so they are agreed, be a ‘ceiling’ to the amount the old person receiving care can be expected to pay towards its cost – but it’ll be another couple of years (just after the next General Election perhaps?) before they decide where that ‘ceiling’ should be.  Well, I am 91 and it doesn’t seem very likely that they’ll make up their minds in time for me to cheer……or otherwise!  

            One thing that has been resented by many old and disabled people has been the need to sell the family home, into which a lifetime’s savings may have been poured, to meet the cost of residential care.   The government has come up with a brilliant (well, they clearly think so) ground-breaking scheme to make this unnecessary.   Local authorities will now be required to make loans of the cost of care to care-home residents who apply for them.  These loans, plus reasonable interest, will be repayable only after the borrower’s death, and will be a charge on his or her estate.  Thus, say the government, care home residents will no longer need to sell their homes to pay the cost of care.

             I can see how the government and the care homes might benefit from such a scheme.  The money for care starts to come in directly the loan is approved without any tedious and uncertain business of selling the family home.  For the life of me though, I can’t see any advantage whatsoever for the old person involved.

            Why is it that most of us are so reluctant to sell our homes even when it is quite obvious that we’ll never be able to live in them independently again?  It is because those homes represent the greater part of our life’s savings.  We’d like to be able to pass them on to our heirs when the time comes.  This may be a thoroughly unreasonable, antisocial and irresponsible desire but it is surely a very natural and understandable one.

It is a desire that the government’s scheme does nothing to satisfy.  Our homes will still have to be sold when we die to repay those loans and – in addition - our heirs will have the extra burden of the interest payments that have accrued in the meantime.  They will be worse off than they would have been if the family home had been sold directly the old person had entered the care home.

            Finally – and I have only just learned this – like so many of the government’s brilliant new initiatives, there’s nothing new or ground-breaking about it.  Such a scheme already exists with just one difference; it provides that loans made by local authorities to pay care home fees and repayable only on the death of the home resident are interest free!

And the rest of us!

          The rest of us oldies – the ones who have managed to keep out of care homes and don’t need social services care in our homes – needn’t think that we are going to escape the attention of those posh boys who don’t know the price of milk. Perhaps it is fortunate that in the nature of things, none of us will have to put up with that attention for very long!

            A Conservative MP, and I’d be surprised if he is alone in this, has drawn attention to the benefits that we get for no other reason than the date on our birth certificates.  Free bus passes, free prescriptions, cut price (though not by much!) rail fares, generous winter fuel allowances; they should all be abolished or means tested.  In an ideal world, he says, it would be wonderful to be able to have all these universal benefits but, in the present economic climate, the country simply can’t afford them.   Funny thing though – he didn’t explain how it is that we can afford to cut the level of income tax for the wealthiest members of our society, those with incomes in excess of £150,000 a year!

            We don’t live in an ideal world.  We never have done so and we never will – but that shouldn’t deter us from striving for one.  Even in an imperfect world it is astonishing what can be afforded when it is really needed.  In 1939, for example, the world was even less perfect than it is today.  Yet the government managed to afford millions of pounds every week for six years, in pursuit of the war.  Thousands of young men and women couldn’t afford to interrupt their early careers for six or seven years to help destroy Nazism and Fascism.  Yet we managed it.  Is it so unreasonable to expect that those of us who have survived and have paid (without either evasion or avoidance!) our taxes for over half a century and are still paying them, but  are now very old, should expect a share of the comforts of civilised life without having first to prove that we are desperately poor and in dire need?

            MPs who seek to means-test or withdraw the benefits of the old should remember that there is one privilege enjoyed by everyone over the age of eighteen and by rich and poor alike.  That is the right to vote in parliamentary and local elections.  Statistics indicate that we oldies are far more likely to exercise that right than those in younger age groups – and universally permitted postal voting now makes it easy for even the most disabled of us to do so.  If I were an ambitious member of parliament, or hoped to become one, I would think twice, and then again, before provoking the wrath of a large, and growing, number of electors!                                          

           

 What the Council costs us!

            Leafing through the back pages of a copy of the daily Gazette a few weeks ago I found, among the adverts for used cars and lonely hearts, an official notice from Tendring Council ‘Members’ Allowances 2012/2013’ setting out the annual cash allowances received by each councillor.   It made fascinating reading.

            Every councillor gets a basic allowance of £4,962 a year.  On top of that the Council Chairman gets £6,070 and Vice-Chairman £2,140.  That’s reasonable enough.  They both have ceremonial and hospitality responsibilities and need a bit extra.

            Then we get the political (or, as they put it, ‘Special Responsibility’) allowances, all in addition to the basic allowance.  The Leader of the Council (the leader of the majority political grouping; much more important nowadays than the mere Chairman) gets an extra £17,862 and his deputy £10,494.  Cabinet Members (that’s the little clique of members of the majority group who actually make all the executive decisions) also each get an extra £10,494.  Opposition Group Leaders get a lump sum allowance of £1,473 plus £174 for each member of their group.

            Then come the Chairmen of the eight committees.  The Chairmen of the Planning Committee and of the Licensing Committee each get £6,072, the Chairman of the Audit Committee £4,467, the Chairmen of the Corporate Management; the Community, Leadership and Partnership Committee; the Service Development and Delivery Committee; and the Human Resources Committee each get £3,573.  Then there’s the Vice-Chairman of the Planning Committee and the Chairman of Licensing Sub-Committees.  They each get £1,965.

            A footnote explains that, ‘in addition to the above, a Dependent and Childcare Allowance continues to be made available to those members who are eligible.’   

            Local government has changed a great deal since my early years in the service when, certainly in the smaller authorities, party membership was simply an indication of a councillor’s general political outlook – not an expectation that, on every issue, there would be a ‘party line’ that all members were expected to follow.  Those were the days when councillors were motivated solely by public spirit and received no payment beyond their out-of-pocket expenses. 

            It seems to me that we are getting into the era of the ‘career local politician’ in a local government that has adopted (or had forced upon it) most of the nastier features of that lot at Westminster!

Week 45 2011 15.11.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions!’

A well-meaning piece of advice given on the BBC tv’s breakfast programme this (7th November) morning threatens to upset the equilibrium of scores of  old people this Christmas and lead to many doctors’ phone-lines being jammed by anxious well-meaning callers in the New Year.

It seems that the early symptoms of dementia in the elderly are being missed and a great many of them are failing to get treatment and support that could help them endure their affliction and slow down (but not halt or reverse!) its progress. It was suggested that those who are seeing an elderly friend or relative this Christmas should look out for these symptoms and get in touch with his or her doctor to let them know.

The symptoms to look for are loss of short-term memory, anxiety, occasional confusion, and personality changes. It is, so we were told, all too easy to put these symptoms down to ‘old age’ when there may well be a more sinister reason. Well, I suppose that there could be, but I reckon that old age does have similar indications of its own for which there may be no other cause

None of us lasts for ever. Our bodies and our brains experience wear and tear as we get older. The results of this show themselves as ‘symptoms’ of what I believe is probably a natural progression for which the only remedy is to die young! There are, of course, lots of things that – with the help of medical science and possibly social services – enable us to make the best of it.

I no longer describe myself ageing or elderly. I am unequivocally old. No other member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90. I am in a position to confirm that old age is not ‘all beer and skittles. I am glad to say though that it isn’t either– at least isn’t yet – the extreme old age referred to by Shakespeare as ‘Last age of all is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’*. Mind you, without modern dentures, two cataract operations and two pairs of spectacles, hearing aids, on line access to my friends and relatives, and an electric mobility scooter to give me independent mobility, my condition might be approaching that. Much as we oldies sometimes complain about aspects of life in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that modern technology has made old age and disability a great deal more tolerable!

Yes – I do have an increasingly failing short-term memory (though I can remember, word for word, poems and short pieces of prose learned long ago!). I am absent minded, and any deviation from normality does make me anxious. I don’t think that my personality has changed much but perhaps I am not the best person to judge that!

I shall be visiting friends and relatives over Christmas. I know them all well enough to be confident that no one will be writing in a little note-book that ‘the poor old chap was anxious about leaving his bungalow empty for a couple of days’ and ‘He forgot to bring his reading glasses, fell asleep in his chair after Christmas Dinner and told us a story that I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times before’, all ready to be reported to my doctor in the New Year!

*From Jacques’ ‘all the world’s a stage…..’ speech in ‘As you like it’.

Age and Income Inequality

The fact that we are all living longer and those lucky enough to have a job are expected to work longer, has given extra urgency to the world wide demand for a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth.

A recent article in the Financial Times comments on a report by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of University College, London and former Chairman of the British Medical Association. Sir Michael forecasts that due to the inequality of health standards between rich and poor, two thirds of today’s population will not reach the new retirement age of 68 without chronic and debilitating illness. His report, based on the 2001 census reveals that the average difference in ‘disability-free life expectancy’ between people living in rich areas and those in poor areas is 17 years!

A blog reader points out that throughout Europe and North America we don’t have enough jobs for young people. We in the UK have 20 percent youth unemployment while in Spain no less than half of its young people are unemployed. Meanwhile the compulsory retirement age in Britain is being raised from 65 to 68 and old people are expected to work longer.

The reader asks, ‘How can it possibly be better for our economy to leave the strongest, fittest, child-rearing generation out of work while older people, many of whom are overweight, arthritic and suffering from mental exhaustion, are forced to carry on working?’ It is true that I was working – and earning – till I reached my eighties, but it was at freelance writing that I enjoyed, and from which I could take a break whenever I chose.

Have we already forgotten that a very high proportion of the rioters and arsonists of last August were unemployed young people. Satan will find mischief still for idle hands to do!

Signs of the times

There have been three items of news during the past few weeks that I have found profoundly depressing. They seem to me to exemplify everything that is wrong with Britain today. The first was the news that in a time of cuts in public services mainly affecting the poor, growing unemployment in both the public and private sectors and frozen or reduced salaries or wages for most people, the directors and chief executives of Britain’s most profitable enterprises have been awarding themselves salary increases of up to 50% - and 50% of a salary already nudging a million a year is a very large sum indeed!

I don’t know how they have the gall to accept it – but they have. I heard one of them interviewed on tv say that if an attempt were to be made to limit the salaries of top earners, they would all disappear to the USA or Asia. I’d say ‘Let them go – and the sooner the better!’ If, to stay afloat, Britain needs the support of those who have no interest in life beyond making money – then Britain deserves to sink.

Those who make such threats will be among the first to accuse public servants of holding the country to ransom when, very shortly, they go on strike because their jobs are imperil, their wages have been frozen, their savings are diminishing as inflation outstrips interest on savings accounts, and they are going to have to wait longer and pay more for their – in most cases – very modest pensions.

Then there were the pictures of long queues waiting up for hours to be the first to buy the very latest, most realistic and most violent and bloody video game on the market coupled with the news that creating the make-believe world of video games is one of Britain’s most successful industries. And to think that the writers of popular fiction used to be accused of encouraging ‘escapism’!

And the last item! It occurred on a day when the financial foundations of the world were shaking; on which we learned that an unknown number of terrorists may have entered the country because the Home Secretary had lost control of part of her Whitehall ‘empire’, and on which there appeared to be a real risk of the UK being dragged by its ‘special relationship’ into yet another Middle East conflict, this time against Iran. Not one of these matters was the lead story of BBC Breakfast, the first BBC News Bulletin of the day. Oh no – the first story was breathtaking news about who had actually administered the final lethal dose of a drug to an American Pop Star with a questionable life style who was already drugged up to the eyeballs. I had felt just a tiny amount of sympathy for the doctor who, it appears, was responsible – until I learned that he had been receiving a salary of 95,000 dollars a month as the pop-star’s medical attendant. That was in a country where, despite the efforts of its present President, millions live in poverty and thousands of the poor can afford no medical care of any kind!

A Damascene Moment!

This afternoon, as I was preparing a packet to send to send off to Germany by post, I had a vision of the future. Quite suddenly, I realized what global capitalism was all about, what was meant by preparing Britain to compete in a global market place – and the inevitable result of trying to do so.

My little ‘honorary’ German niece Maja had recently celebrated her fifth birthday. One of my British real nieces had thought that she would like to give the child a belated birthday present. She gave me a charming child’s shoulder and hand bag to send to her. I duly bought an appropriately sized padded envelope/bag at the Post Office and, with the help of Google Translate, wrote a suitable message in German to enclose with the present. I addressed it and took it to the Post Office for despatch.

It was as I sealed up the envelope that I had my epiphany (sorry about my Biblical vocabulary. It seems to go naturally with the nature of my vision). There was the envelope, bulging with its contents, with Royal Mail stamped proudly upon it, together with Maja’s address, an airmail label and – in small print in the corner - Made in China!

All became clear. Of course there are firms in Britain that could have manufactured and supplied comparable, perhaps better, padded envelopes. However, free competition and the global market insisted that even such a very British institution as the Royal Mail has to accept the lowest tender. A firm in China could manufacture them and transport them halfway round the world, just a little cheaper than any manufacturer in Britain, or in Europe, could manage to make them.

How then must Britain, or indeed any other European country, prepare itself to compete in the wonderful new Global Market, so beloved by both the Conservatives and New Labour? The only way that I can see is by reducing British wages to below the level of those of the factory workers of China and India, and increasing their hours of work, cutting public services, social housing and public transport to the level in those countries and by regarding the poor, the disabled and the homeless with the indifference that many in those countries regard them. ‘They’ve got families to support them haven’t they? Everybody knows that the poor breed like rabbits!’

Who knows, if we do it thoroughly enough we may one day be able to turn England’s green and pleasant land into a brave new world capable of obtaining contracts with the Chinese Mail Service to supply them with padded postal packets! Even then, of course, there’s still the chance that some country in Africa or South America will manage to undercut all of us.

It makes me wish that I were young enough and fit enough to join the protesters at St. Paul’s Cathedral!